Kate Bush tells the BBC: ‘I haven’t written a song for ages’

In a new interview for BBC 6 Music to promote her new live album, Kate Bush tells Mat Everitt: “I haven’t written a song for ages” adding that she “hasn’t been writing” at all since the Before The Dawn shows over two years ago.
When quizzed as to why, she says she has been “putting a live album together” but stresses she hasn’t retired, describing her situation as a recording artist as not a “full stop”, but rather a “big comma”.

Reflecting back on the concerts, Kate said that after doing two albums [2011’s Director’s Cut and 50 Words For Snow) in “quite quick succession” she “felt like doing something different, that wasn’t going to mean sitting in the studio for a couple of years, just putting an album together”.

She also admitted to being “terrified” of doing live work as a performer, again. You can hear the full hour-long interview at 1pm on Sunday 20th November on BBC Radio 6 Music, but for now the six-minute preview is below.

SDE will be publishing an interview with Before The Dawn guitarist David Rhodes in the near future. The live album is released on 25 November 2016.

26 responses to Kate Bush tells the BBC: ‘I haven’t written a song for ages’

I actually admire Kate’s approach to music. She just does it when she really wants to. Must admit though, I just assumed she would be an artist who would be constantly thinking of ideas and working on them. On the downside, it will be bloody years until the next KB album!

In the interview clip, she mentions completing this project and wanting to do something different… so I’m surmising that unless a DVD / Blu-Ray has already been prepared as part of this project, there isn’t going to be one. I’m hoping the interviewer asks this in the rest of the interview, but it may have been a forbidden question!

She’s a tiny bit defensive when asked why she hasn’t written anything… but anyway, looking forward to hearing the interview, even if I’m always left a little disappointed with Kate interviews, because she’s so guarded and never really gives much away!

Regarding the unanswered question of video release. I am amazed with this interview, if there is no information, whether video from concert series is released at all. Forbidden question to the media or not? At least to become publicised.

It is very typical by artists and their agents that there are subjects that can not be discussed or publicised as a condition to be allowed to interview in the first place.

Proven fact is that there were several camera stands in the audience during performances.

You’re well off with Kate Bush then. What should fans of Mary Margaret O’Hara say?
And, quick change of medium, think of film-director Terence Mallick. He used to be a legend as long as he didn’t released one film a year, not much left of that status now i think.

Paul, have you considered asking Stephen Tayler to do an interview? He worked on both the concert and the album mix. Could be interesting to hear what he has to say about it from a technological perspective.

She’s just waiting for her house to fall off into the ocean, and for her life to be remembered as a fable.

We will never hear any high resolution releases of her albums or see any professionally remastered videos. The future world won’t even know she was real. The current world only knows her because of those who grew up with lps and cassettes, but we won’t be around forever.

I’ve no issue with her work rate – she earned her home-life & semi-retirement long ago – but I am puzzled by the lack of any kind of remastering or revisiting of her back-catalogue. She’s clearly not averse to the idea, hence The Director’s Cut (and even the new vocal on Wuthering Heights for The Whole Story way back when), so it seems strange that she wouldn’t be interested in some kind of “polish” on her old albums, or hell, even an updated Best Of to include the post-Hounds Of Love years…

Well I have to say I find it bloody amazing that a ‘live album’ takes 2 years to ‘work on’ and issue, at the expense of everything else, it seems. Whilst I am not attacking her in any way, or claiming she owes her fans anything (she obviously thinks she doesn’t), and I have been a major fan since the very beginning (ok enough defensiveness now), her work rate leaves me absolutely flabbergasted. There isn’t even a bloody DVD/ Blu-ray to accompany this release.

Sorry, but at this rate, as one other commentator stated, there will not be any decent collections or remasterings available in her lifetime – she’ll literally have to drop dead and someone else will have to get their hands on this stuff.

What New Kraftwerk material is there to buy? There’s been nothing since 2001. As far as I’m concerned, ex-Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos(both as a solo artist and with “Electric Music”) is the heir apparent to the Kraftwerk sound. Originally a drummer/percussionist and songwriter, he is now a capable multi-instrumentalist(guitars/keyboards) and vocalist. Check out his latest solo album “Off The Record”, which is the closest you’ll get to Kraftwerk outtakes. The songs are built from pieces of music recorded during his years with Kraftwerk, with lyrics & vocals added recently.

As for people who would want Kate Bush outtakes & unreleased songs, it should be noted, that in an interview with Crawdaddy Magazine(about the time of “Hounds of Love”), she stated that the only of her albums’ sessions that had produced many unreleased songs was “Lionheart”. I would think that much of her surplus material from other 1978-85 sessions was used as non-L.P. B-sides. Even up to the time of her fourth album, she was still occasionally drawing on a backlog of songs she had written and demoed back when she was 14 or 15.
But her refusal to reissue any of her video programs is simply unreasonable. As for myself, I dubbed my Japanese(NTSC) and British(PAL) Laserdiscs to DVD-R.

Why not Paul ?
It would be one of the most obvious and justifiable questions to ask Kate after she produced such a visual show and had it filmed on 2 nights !
If the question is not asked then I take it it is on Kate’s demand and that could mean she’s still working on it and does not want to say anything before it’s completed. It took her 2 years to release the audio, it could take her a couple of years more for the video…..
But if there is to be no dvd at all, why not just say it and then move on to the next question ?

Not much point having a big debate about it.. let’s wait and see. He didn’t appear to follow up and ask why it’s taken her 2 years to mix a live album, which is the ‘obvious’ thing to say. But it’s an hour long interview, so it will be interesting to see what they actually talk about.

I thought the question about whether recent events has ‘informed’ Kate’s writing was a bit silly… someone who has released 3 albums in the last 23 years isn’t an artist who feels a need to respond and document world events!!